We are happy and proud to announce that Stéphane Hessel, Grand Officier of the Légion d'Honneur and Ambassador of France, conferred the Cross of Officer of the Légion d'Honneur on Agnès b., in a ceremony which took place February 18th.Stéphane Hessel was born in Berlin in 1917, and is the son of [...] +

We are happy and proud to announce that Stéphane Hessel, Grand Officier of the Légion d'Honneur and Ambassador of France, conferred the Cross of Officer of the Légion d'Honneur on Agnès b., in a ceremony which took place February 18th.Stéphane Hessel was born in Berlin in 1917, and is the son of the writer Franz Hessel who inspired the character of Jules in Henri-Pierre Roché's novel Jules et Jim.In the 1920s, Stéphane Hessel accompanied his mother into exile in Paris. During the Second World War, he was arrested by the Gestapo for his Resistance activities and deported. He escaped hanging and fled while being transported.After the war, he became French Ambassador to the UN, and a variety of diplomatic posts were to follow. In 1948, he took part in drawing up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in his capacities as Henri Laugier's principal private secretary, deputy general secretary of the UN and secretary of the Human Rights Commission.He was a member of cabinet in the government of Pierre Mendès-France.In 2004, he signed the appeal launched by some of the early members of the Resistance, calling upon the younger generations "to bring life to the still-relevant ideals of social, economic and cultural democracy inherited from the Resistance and, in their turn, to pass these on".On 10 December 2008, Stéphane Hessel received the Unesco-Bilbao Prize for the Promotion of a Culture of Human Rights.This committed European is Vice-President of the international ethical, political and scientific Collegium. In 2009, he decided to support Europe Ecologie, appearing symbolically in final place on the Paris Europe Ecologie list for the 2010 regional elections. -